Alarm Clocks - Practical Exercises for Disrupting Our ‘Sleep’

Alarm Clocks - Practical Exercises for Disrupting Our ‘Sleep’

Ouspensky said that all our difficulties in living a conscious life stem from our inability to remember ourselves. He further stated that this fact tells us exactly what we need to do - we need to try to remember ourselves.

Self remembering is connected to ‘divided attention’, which is already a higher state of consciousness, in that we are aware of a larger reality than we are when our attention is wandering or held captive in fascination. These latter two types of ‘attention’ are how we spend most of our waking lives. With divided attention, a sense of ourselves is included with whatever else is going on in the moment. Gurdjieff gave a simple example of looking at a street. With divided attention, one is simultaneously aware of the street and of oneself looking at the street. An eastern anecdote speaks of a monk looking at a beautiful landscape and then suddenly becoming aware of himself as part of the landscape.

While dividing one’s attention sounds very simple, sincere attempts to do so will quickly show the formidable depths of our sleep. Most of the time, not only are we not dividing our attention, but we have also forgotten about it completely!

And so, we return to Self Remembering. Ouspensky offered a systematic approach for developing this capacity when he described the three ‘measures’ of self remembering: frequency, duration, and depth.

Frequency is the first objective; duration and depth have no reliable meaning unless we can increase the number of moments that we remember ourselves.

“Rules are the alarm clocks that wake the sleeping man.” -Gurdjieff

There are many simple things that we can do to interrupt the mechanical momentum of our existence and give ourselves a moment of self remembering, a brief awakening from sleep.

We can change the wallpaper on our cellphones weekly or daily. We can wear our watch on the other wrist. We can slow down our movements. We can try to do one thing at a time, without multitasking. We can avoid crossing our legs or gesticulating when talking.

What are some of your personal ‘alarm clocks’ that help you remember yourself more often?

Adoration of the Magi

Painting by Sandro Botticelli (detail)